


Rhododendron Moon

by Vulgarweed



Series: The Bone Fiddle [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Anal Sex, Appalachia, Fiddling, Fluff, Full Moon, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Rhododendrons, Riding, Romance, Whip-poor-wills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:15:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John remembered Irene Adler saying, months ago, “And some say they've heard ghostly fiddle music out in the woods late at night, over round the Mt. Musgrave area. You heard anything like that?” </p><p>This is set in the AU universe of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/573857/chapters/1028448">The Bone Fiddle</a>, but you don't have to have read that to understand this; you just have to wrap your brain around Sherlock and John living in a big old house halfway up a roadless mountain in southern West Virginia in the early 1970s. Also, any abuse you may perceive of “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," and/or <i>The Silmarillion</i> is entirely intentional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhododendron Moon

John couldn't tell right away what had woken him. He'd had no bad dreams. It wasn't the sleep-thrashing of long limbs beside him – he was alone in their big wooden bed. (Perhaps that was it, but he was used to that too.) It wasn't the nocturnal forest chorus – the peepers, the crickets, the whip-poor-wills, the occasional pronouncement from the great horned owl that lived up in the deep woods.

It might have been the moonlight, pouring in through the window and filling the room with silver shadows. The warm late-spring breeze lifted the curtains, and John rose to the window, looking out on the moonlit yard, every blade of grass and piece of junk in stark-edged outline.

No. It wasn't that. It was the music.

Subtle as a breeze, a lone fiddle sang sadly. John recognized its voice immediately, of course – oh, once he might have thought they all sounded more or less the same, but he knew much better now. He could hear Irene Adler saying, months ago, “And some say they've heard ghostly fiddle music out in the woods late at night, over round the Mt. Musgrave area. You heard anything like that?” John hadn't made the connection yet, but if this was a real local folktale, then he was living in it.

The fiddle wasn't in the house, it was far off in the woods, somewhere up the side of the mountain. It probably meant Sherlock wanted to be alone, but when the moon shone like that, it was hard to resist a siren call.

John grinned and pulled on jeans and sneakers, keeping his thin old t-shirt. He didn't take a flashlight. That would be cheating. (He didn't take the paintball gun either. Wrong kind of game.)

The light did magical things to the dew settling on the grass. The air was sultry and humid, and there was a light, clear mist rising from the ground (nothing at all like the blinding rain-cloud fogs that settled down for days over the mountaintops). John skirted the edge of the meadow where Arthur drowsed. “Sshhh,” he whispered, finger to his lips. He had no doubt that even at a half mile's distance, Sherlock could read every nuance of his whinnies like words. The horse kept his silence.

Up at the edge of the meadow, right before the forest began, was a patriarch of oaks, one of the most magnificent trees John had ever seen. Family money had spared it from the logging. Nearby was an ancient root cellar that seemed much older than the house, and a pit in the ground where an immense sister tree had once stood. Sherlock had told John that once, the two trees' shadows had pointed to a buried treasure from before the Civil War. The other tree had been a chestnut, though, and it died like all the others, standing for years as a tall, massive gray corpse until a storm took it down in the early 60s, years before Sherlock came. (He'd still been able to calculate where the shadow must have pointed.)

Smiling fondly, John entered the woods and let darkness fall around him; he had that music to guide him. He tried to walk quietly – and he was good at that. Sherlock had learned woodcraft the same way he learned everything else (quickly and flawlessly), but John had been born to this land.

The flame azaleas were mostly spent, and the broad leaves of mayapples tugged at his ankles. During the day it wouldn't be unheard of to find a benign sort of poacher in these woods; it was the season for the pungent ramps. They were delicious for cooking, you couldn't blame them. Late fall, that was when the more dangerous poachers came, looking for the wild ginseng that brought serious money. 

(“They say it's an aphrodisiac,” John had said, looking over Sherlock's own harvest back in early December. “Good for virility.”

“Do you think we need that?” Sherlock had asked with a sly smile, pushing John down suggestively onto the table amid the greens and roots.)

Up the mountain John went as the music became less ethereal and more solid, and the owls cried out and the whip-poor-wills gorged on moths without ever breaking their whistly death-song.

Snakes would be sleeping, but there'd be bears and bobcats, and the rustle of smaller animals. Reflecting eyes of a possum, silent hunting of a fox. John's nose told him that some creature somewhere not far off had run afoul of a skunk _With my luck, it was Sherlock,_ John thought. _Sad thing is, I'd probably still want him._

He thought he knew now where the music was coming from – just below the dark top of the ridge was a lovely little laurel bald, a glade ringed and held clear by the mighty dark-leaved rhododendrons now exploding into bloom at his time of year. The state flower, and they couldn't have picked a better one.

The oldest of them made deep woody tangles, with plenty of space between their branches to slip through if one is careful and patient, a canopied living cave. Just enough moonlight filtered down for John to creep between the twisted little trunks, and he thought at least he was making no more noise than a raccoon might. Well, a bear cub anyway. A drunk one.

The music was louder now, and John imagined he could hear the whispering scrape of the bow on string beneath each plaintive note of the melody that pierced him to the heart.

Between the long evergreen leaves, he saw: Sherlock was still in his pajamas and bathrobe, and the purity of the notes came straight from each precise sweep of the bow, controlled and shaped by the trill of his long fingers. He'd taken off his . . . slippers? Did he really wear _slippers_ to go for a midnight hike? Oh, John would have words with him about that. His long feet were white in the moonlight as they almost danced on the ground amid the sparse forest-floor greenery, the little white wild violets, the wintergreen and galax. Beneath the tall hemlocks, he swayed to his own music in his robe of midnight blue; the moon lit his hair like twilight and his eyes like evening.

 _The Devil's instrument,_ John thought. _Lots of churches won't allow 'em, good stern Christians won't have 'em in the house. And he sure plays like he won a duel or made a deal._

But John was the one who must have made a deal he didn't even remember, because how the hell else could this be his life now – this moonlight, this music, this man?

The only request he could even remember making wasn't to the Devil at all: “Please God, let me live,” as his body seized up in shock and pain and his life's blood leached out into jungle soil. And live he had. Was this the reason?

Before John could even properly absorb that thought, the piercing bittersweet air had changed – the plangent double-stopping of the mountain style came back in force, and the tune reshaped itself into “Soldier's Joy.”

Sherlock didn't turn, didn't look directly at him, but John knew that he'd been spotted, or scented, or sensed. 

Sherlock just played a few rounds of the tune in a calm, unhurried way, and then at last he turned and gave a little bow towards the rhododendron cove.

“Do you take requests?” John asked, not quite crawling out yet.

“That depends on what you're requesting,” Sherlock said, his voice pitched in that particular low, challenging way. The fiddle was lifted some distance away from that gap between chin and shoulder, and John almost imagined he could see the slight red mark where it had been pressed. He wanted to taste it.

John emerged awkwardly from the shrubbery and approached Sherlock slowly. Was that a trick of a fabric drape, or was he half-hard already? From anticipation when he'd observed John's presence, or from his own playing? John reckoned it didn't matter, he'd get him well past half soon enough.

Sherlock lifted up his bow and held the tip at John's jawline like a weapon. (He probably knew how to use it as one.) 

John shivered and lifted his chin to feel it, the strange sensation of rosin-sticky horsehair brushing his throat. He let out a soft surprised sound, and said, “I guess I don't sound as good when you play me.”

“On the contrary,” Sherlock said, running the bow against the back of John's neck, drawing him in as he leaned down. 

Their mouths met with a hungry delight, wet and soft and searching. John curled his hand around Sherlock's neck and buried his fingertips in his hairline, opening his mouth to let Sherlock's tongue inside, feeling the vibrations of Sherlock's little moan against his palm. 

John ran his other hand down Sherlock's back, pulling him close, insinuating under his t-shirt and bathrobe, stroking firmly at his lower spine and sacrum, scratching lightly at that spot that made Sherlock arch like a cat and go weak in the knees.

John was no deductive genius but every time they came together in this way, he got another little taste of that heady power of knowledge as he learned a little more of Sherlock's body, of all the little ways to make _his_ nerves _in particular_ go haywire with need, and he was eager to learn them all, no matter how many years it took. He leaned up, struggling for access to Sherlock's sensitive ear, biting at it gently and whispering, “I want to make love to you.”

“Romantic,” Sherlock muttered, neck bent to give John a better angle, not sounding nearly as disdainful as he was trying to, not with his breathing getting heavy and his voice low and hoarse.

“Yeah?” John laughed, pausing to slide his tongue up the soft-skinned curve of cartilage. “How 'bout if I say I wanna lay you down and ride you like a stolen mule?”

“You say that like it means the same thing.”

“It does,” John said, and bit a little harder, snaking his hand under Sherlock's waistband and over those firm curves he loved so much, grasping there to pull him closer. Sherlock groaned, and winced a little when John's belt buckle scraped his sensitive skin. 

Sherlock slithered out of John's arms long enough to set the fiddle and bow down in its case, and in that moment John glanced over at the weird array of items Sherlock had managed to fit in there. A little black ledger book, a flashlight (cheater!), a small revolver, and (oh that conniving bastard), a jar of Vaseline. _As long as he's got his big brain, those things are all he'd need to get by in life, really,_ John thought fondly.

With that taken care of, case shut against the damp and the Vaseline in his robe pocket, Sherlock lunged back on John and kissed him hard again, drinking deep and quickly undoing John's belt. 

Whip-poor-wills still whistling, the clink of metal and creak of leather and rustle of fabric and soft wet sounds of kissing as Sherlock quickly stripped John below the waist and had his heated shaft nestled in his hand before John fully felt the cool air on his body, and John moaned deep into Sherlock's mouth. 

John wanted to counterstrike, wanted to sink to his knees and bury his face in Sherlock's groin, inhaling deep that heady male-animal scent of him, so raw and primal, before licking him, stroking him, sucking him...

But Sherlock knelt with him, and instead they indulged in some half-dressed writhing together on the bed of leaves – part rutting, part wrestling. Laughing and biting and rolling each other, panting and grunting, finally coming to rest with Sherlock on his back half beneath the rhododendrons, still half-lit by moonlight, his curls wild and dirty against the ground and his robe spread out around him like a mantle. 

John backed off him just enough to get those pajama pants down over his knobbly knees, and then to gaze down on the beauty of Sherlock's thick, swollen cock, wet at the head and looking so desperate to be touched, standing proudly from its base of dark hair, such a contrast to his white belly. John straddled Sherlock again and pressed his own aching dick right up against it, rubbing slow and hard against him.

Sherlock was shaking with desire, hands flung over his head as he arched up to frot against John harder. His eyes opened again – the left bright in the moonlight, the right dark in shadow – as he looked up above him. _“Rhododendron maximum_ is toxic.”

“Don't bite down on it when I make you come, then,” John said, unwilling to be distracted by a non sequitur. Sherlock squirmed deliciously, biting his lip. _God,_ he loved being talked dirty to. He could give as good as he got, too. “How do you want it, Sherlock? How do you want me to make you come so hard you might pass out? You know I can do that in _lots_ of ways.”

Sherlock brought his hands down fast, gripping hard at John's thighs. “I want to fuck,” he said. He made that _word_ sound erect, urgent, full of hot blood. “Inside you, John, nice and deep. With you on top – grinding your hips, taking me in and out of you, letting me watch you move.”

“Yeah,” John said, “just like I said, I want to ride you--”

“Like a stolen mule?”

“Like the thoroughbred you are.” 

Sherlock closed his eyes at this and writhed a little. Preening? Breathing that praise deep into his skin? Didn't matter. John was teasing Sherlock's cock with his hand, sliding slow to watch the beautiful responses: the ripple of his abs as he thrust back, the baring of his throat, the biting of his lip.

“Don't tease,” Sherlock said, “don't make me wait.” He pulled the little square jar out of his pocket, and John grabbed it quickly, slicking up his own fingers and giving his own cock a few slick tugs to ease the fire, nudging his balls out of the way to give Sherlock a little show as he pressed at his own hole, teasing himself with fluttering taps and slow circles, before sinking in to the palm.

Sherlock was rapt, eyes fixed on the spectacle for a while, breathing hard. Then he dipped his own fingers through the Vaseline and caught up John's smaller hand in his own, pushing a finger of his inside right alongside John's. John shuddered in the rush of heat as Sherlock took control of John's hand, curling that longer finger inside just right and moving both their hands in deeper circles.

“Fuck,” John cried, as they were both finger-fucking him _together._ “I could come just from this – “

 _“DON'T,"_ Sherlock demanded, with a sharp little snap of his wrist.

“Didn't say I would,” John said. “Just that I could.”

“Please . . .” Sherlock said, and Christ, John would never get tired of hearing _that_ word out of his mouth either, “let me enter you now, take me inside, please.”

“Oh yes, yes,” John said, slicking up Sherlock's straining cock (and the size of it still gave him a tiny little thrill of fear, every time, though by now he knew what he was doing). He leaned forward and pressed the head of it _there,_ just there, at his twitching rim, pushing so very gently that just the tip started to nudge its way in. Sherlock let out a long shaking breath and ran his hands up and down John's legs, trying to calm himself as John smiled in a conspiratorial way, sinking down on that hot rod and snapping back up again, then down further as Sherlock thrashed and moaned.

John couldn't get enough of watching him while he did this, that strange and delicious stretching and filling, directly connected to Sherlock's ecstatic writhing and his own instinct to thrust and grind, to get more sensation, always more . . . 

The piercing field of Sherlock's gaze was a sensation in itself; he was _so_ absorbed in watching John move, studying every roll and push of his body; every hair and freckle and slide of muscle and drip of sweat. Sherlock coiled his hand around John's jutting cock, not pumping hard, just keeping contact and stroking. “Talk to me,” John said, leaning low, feeling the heat of Sherlock's sweat, “if you can. Tell me how it feels.”

“Ex . . . quisite,” Sherlock said hoarsely. “You're like – elastic silk inside, caressing me. Your little hole, so stretched, so tight . . . squeezing me . . . _fuck,_ it's . . . you're a perfect conductor, you've learned how to do this . . . so well . . . and it's all for me . . .”

“That's right,” John moaned softly. “Never done this for anyone else. Never – only you, only you filling me like this, putting it up in me, so . . . good, oh yes – ” Sherlock had planted his feet on the ground and was thrusting up into John now – not hard, nor fast, just slow and deep, letting John rock his hips in the way he liked best, Sherlock's big hands light but possessive on his hips. 

_I'm good at this,_ John thought. _And I've just learned how, it's a skill, it's muscle training, it's relaxing and tightening and ignoring the burn in my thighs when I'm moving, and oh god it's his face, oh god oh god._ He looked up at the moon through the window in the leaves, letting its cool light calm him as he and Sherlock moved together, joined and connected, locked in a loop of pleasure.

John leaned down over Sherlock as he started to ride harder now, faster, rucking up Sherlock's t-shirt and caressing his stomach and chest, feeling his heaving breaths, his racing pulse. Close, he was close now, John could tell by his pace and the desperate pitch of his vocalized panting. John sped up, grinding hard, and pinched Sherlock's nipples as his chest arched up and Sherlock _whined,_ high and loud, bouncing John on his hips as his cock swelled and twitched inside.

John kept moving, milking every wave and shiver out of him as Sherlock lay back, spasming slightly, arm draped over his eyes, trying to get his voice back. John pulled Sherlock's arm away and made him watch as he jerked himself, hard and fast, still pumping his hips as the coiled knot of pleasure in his belly crested and opened and he clenched and shook, shouting, as he painted Sherlock's stomach with come.

“Thank you,” Sherlock finally said, sliding out of John carefully and wincing a little at the squelch.

“Oh no, thank _you,”_ John laughed.

“I'm serious. It was very kind of you to bring exactly what I needed all the way up here for me. I was worried I'd have to go all the way back to the house to have it.”

“To have _it?”_

“To have _you.”_

There was an openness and warmth in Sherlock's eyes that John didn't see very often, but a glimpse from time to time just might be enough. If the moon was full all the time, he wouldn't appreciate it so much. “You pretty much only say 'please' and 'thank you,' when we're having sex, you know that?”

“Don't ruin the moment, John.”

 _I don't think I could,_ John thought, lying down on his back in the leaves beside Sherlock and trying not to think of what was going to be sticking to his sweaty, greased-up ass when he got up again. The moon still floated high and bright above them, veiled now and again by misty clouds, and the scent of sweat and sex melded with those of earth and loam and the pale hint of the rhododendron blossoms. John made no comment at all as Sherlock's hand found his, and took it.

 _Look at us._ John thought. _Two half-naked crazy people. Lunatics, literally._

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Sherlock said.

“I thought you weren't real big on astronomy.”

“Doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.”

“I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world right now,” John said.

“Neither would I,” said Sherlock, smiling. “Especially since very soon Deputy Donovan will figure out that the pathologist from Mercer County has botched an autopsy very badly and attempted to blame his failure to gather the correct evidence on her. She's not to blame, of course; she's a mundane little person, but she's not actually terrible at her job and she went over and beyond as a first responder considering the crime was not even in her jurisdiction. Her reaction will be disproportionally angry because it was actually Deputy Anderson who did the initial sloppy evidence-gathering and explanations that he blamed on her – and he's led her to believe his feelings for her are deeper than they are. Their soap-opera shenanigans are of no lasting interest, though. The truth IS of lasting interest:, the death that was written off as a DUI was really the result of a rare tropical bacterium that had been sent through the mail. I wish they'd called us in before it was all over, John. The pathogen in question is native to Southeast Asia, and it's possible you've seen its effects before.”

John turned to look at him, fond but a little nonplussed. “You weren't thinking about that . . . when we were . . .?”

Sherlock huffed, offended. “Of course not. That's what I was thinking about while I was _playing._ The intense climax you gave me only helped to solidify the final missing link.”

“But the music . . . it was so . . .” _Never mind,_ John thought, grinning. “Well, that still doesn't ruin the moment.”

“Good.”

 

~end~

**Author's Note:**

> [The call of the whip-poor-will. Blasphemous piping.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXwoHqjO3lA)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (There are no nightingales in North America, and there's no Sindarin word for whip-poor-will. So the closest John will get to calling Sherlock 'Tinúviel,' is saying something like “I love you, you funny-looking moth-eating death bird, even though you never let me sleep all summer.”)
> 
>  
> 
> It was really difficult to find good photos of rhododendrons the way I remember them: these monstrous tangled shrubs in the woods that shape themselves into massive caves that shut out almost all growth beneath them and almost all light above them.


End file.
